Retrofitting hotels: evidence from the Protea Hospitality Group of hotels within Gauteng, South Africa.

Abstract

Over the past decade the environmental responsibilities, practices, policies and performance of hotels have garnered an increasing international scholarship by tourism and hospitality researchers.The imperative for environmental retrofitting of hotels arises from the existence of resource-intensive and frequently inefficient systems and operational routines in the hotel sector which can result in negative environmental impacts. The present article analyses one dimension of the relationship between hotels and sustainable development in South Africa. Specific attention is on issues of the environmental retrofitting in hotels. The empirical focus is upon the operations of a ten hotels in Gauteng, South Africa’s economic heartland, which are part of the Protea Hospitality Group. It is revealed that the nature of retrofitting initiatives at the hotels differed with the most common initiatives being the introduction of LED lighting and recycling initiatives. The leading reasons for introducing environmentally friendly measures were to reduce the hotel’s carbon footprint, to reduce costs and to enhance brand image. These findings align with those of other investigations which have highlighted profit considerations linked to enhanced competitiveness as the most significant drivers for the greening of hotels.

Keywords

• Retrofitting
• built environment
• hotels
• Protea
• greening
• South Africa